We now understand, based on our experience in trying to
liberate the citizens of Iraq from despotism, that despotism can take
many forms. It is becoming more and more evident — and this is something
we could not have known until we had deposed Saddam Hussein and begun
to deal with the forces which reorganized and redeployed themselves after
his fall — that those committed to realizing power through inflicting
death and destruction will likely persist in the form of Iraqi "insurgents"
for the foreseeable future.

As has become clear, the notion that, after the fall of
Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi citizens would come forth openly and reveal
to those who had liberated them the identities of the regime's supporters
was not going to happen. This is in no small part cultural. Family and
tribal loyalties are fundamental to the organization of Iraqi society,
and enormous pressure is exerted on Iraqis to uphold them. In the face
of such deep-seated loyalties, the idea of a western-style democratic
government, for the purpose of instituting which Iraqis would need to
inform on family and clan members, is, practically speaking, unrealistic.
Even now such loyalties tear at the fabric of the Iraqi armed forces,
exacerbating the already difficult task which we are engaged in of trying
to rebuild them into something akin to a western style militia.

Indeed, even if you discount biased "mainstream media"
representations of our difficulties in Carbombistan (with a nod to Jungle
denizen Terrence in Sierra Madre), the efforts of (primarily) Sunni terrorist/insurgents
in Iraq are plainly difficult to suppress. Nor do I want to hear that
calling any Middle Eastern nation that harbors and encourages terrorism
"Carbombistan" is politically incorrect or constitutes an unfair
generalization, or that it's somehow America's fault that the current
situation in Iraq is being played out. It's only because we called out
Saddam Hussein and made good on a demand for compliance to UN resolutions
that the United Nations had issued time and again but which that organization
didn't have the moral fiber, not to mention the political will or the
military resources, to back up that the region can legitimately be designated
Carbombistan.

Put another way (to quote a phrase from the 1980 film,
The Stunt Man, which the character of the stunt director in that film
uses to describe a stunt man's relationship to the leading man): we became
the UN's "cock and balls." In doing so we simply brought to
a turning point a situation that had been simmering for more than a decade.
(Did I mention, by the way, that Carbombistan's first citizen, Osama bin
Laden, engineered and underwrote the attacks on America on September 11,
2001, which brought down the Twin Towers and killed some 3,000 American
citizens?)

The situation in Iraq has also come about because of the
omnipresence of intimidation, which is for most Iraqis part of their daily
lives. Terrorists simply threaten Iraqi citizens and their families with
torture and death if they reveal the identities of so-called "insurgents"
to coalition forces. The uncovering in Fallujah of houses used by terrorist/insurgents
for the purpose of torturing Iraqi citizens suspected of informing on
"the insurgency" confirms this horrible fact of life in a city
controlled by terrorists. I don't think there is a single person among
us who would risk the lives of children and loved ones for what must still
seem at best a remote chance for freedom, in itself a concept many Iraqis
can have only a passing acquaintance with.

Overcoming such facts of life is a significant part of
what faces the United States and its armed forces as we try to build a
nation out of what remains a congeries of tribal groups whose political
loyalties are defined within those groups and whose enmity for people
of other ethnic-religious groups seems unbounded. Indeed, while there
is ample evidence that terrorists from outside Iraq are participating
in the insurgency, a significant majority of insurgent fighters and leaders
come from the ranks of Saddam Hussein's army. They are overwhelmingly
Sunni, and they are loyal, not so much to the idea of returning a Ba'athist
government to power, but to the idea of not relinquishing Sunni power,
which, despite the fact that Sunni Muslims make up less than a quarter
of the population of Iraq, they had partaken of during Saddam's regime.

Sunnis have been used to holding power in Iraq by means
of the most unspeakable brutality; why should we be surprised that they
are intent on, if not regaining power, then at least preventing other
factions from assuming it, through the same brutal means? Sunni leaders,
anticipating the near certainty of a broad Shi'ite political victory,
certainly see the Iraqi elections scheduled for January as the instrument
of their disenfranchisement.

What is happening in Iraq at this time, then, is nothing
less than civil war. Our deposing of Saddam Hussein has, in fact, had
the unforeseen consequence of plunging that country into civil strife
between tribal and religious factions, the only truly meaningful categories
on which political differences are based in the Middle East. Indeed, as
Michael Scott Doran puts forth (in a December 11 Wall Street Journal piece
entitled "The Iraq Effect?"), "Shi'ite Muslims are even
more hated by Sunni Muslims than are Jews and Christians."

The right to again govern their country is not a goal
Iraq's Sunni insurgents can hope to realize through their present tactics,
but to withdraw from violent conflict would seem to them to mean almost
certainly to give up any hope whatsoever of influencing the direction
Iraqi politics takes. Until political dialogue and compromise become part
of the electoral process in Iraq, we can only hope that elections will
go ahead as planned and that the outcome will result in a government that
is able to proceed on the course currently proposed. If that course includes
bringing under control, with the aid of the United States military, the
predominantly Sunni Muslim forces opposed to democratic government in
the civil war that currently rages in Iraq, then that is the first order
of business that must be addressed by the new Iraqi government.